I found out some users in this forum sharing this reddit link about K/DA which you can find in the reddit forum: https://www.reddit.com/r/kpopt…a_confirmed_that_he_took/
You can find the line "Blackpink was his main real-life inspiration of creating K/DA characters as what they are." which I think the statement is basically a stretch.
I found the link about the story of K/DA creation process that you can read from here
Basically Riot music division had many people who passionate in music and they had ambition to create annual anthem in the form of music universe where alternate versions of League of Legends characters would become musicians. They created a band called Pentakill in 2010 based on LoL characters. When Riot music team found out that Worlds 2018 was held in South Korea. They planned to create a virtual group K/DA because they found out that many rioters were secretly kpop fans. They already had Kpop music in mind and the first thing they figured out was K/DA sound. Their music composer, Sebastian Najand, found inspiration in acts such as 4minute and Skrillex.
Then after they figuring out the music concept, they planned other things about the group: which LoL characters that they wanted to include in the group, skins design etc. You can watch the process here :
The creation process of character's skins itself went through so many concept iterations. There were many people working in this project.
You can read in this link:
From that link the product lead for the K/DA Skins herself stated that they did a lot of research in Kpop groups.
her statement from the link:
"Janelle: A lot of the skins team, including me, wasn’t very familiar with K-Pop. I hadn’t watched or listened to any K-pop since 2001! It was so different than what I remembered….so we watched a lot of it. Everything popular, basically. A lot of the team became k-pop fans from watching so many videos."
The designer that being talked in the reddit link itself was co-concept artist in skin's design team, Zeronis. The main idea or concept of K/DA itself was not decided by Zeronis alone. He is a fan of Blackpink but I think the main concept of K/DA was not from one specific group. The team did many research in popular kpop groups.
And I think the earlier concept of Ahri was based on a specific group is also a stretch.
You can found earlier iteration of Ahri's concept in this link from Zeronis art page: https://zeronis-pk.artstation.com/projects/mqDOEE
In addition to this, I also want to add about why they chose G-Idle as the voice / singer for two of their characters.
Basically, a bunch of people work in Riot are big fans of G-IDLE. this is the snippet of text from the link that talked about why they chose G-Idle as vocals of Ahri and Akali characters.
"Toa: A bunch of us here at Riot are big (G)I-DLE fans. Soyeon is a super talented rapper and singer and was a natural fit for K/DA Akali. Miyeon has an incredible voice that really fit how we envisioned the vocals for K/DA Ahri. They also took the time to play League of Legends and learn more about the champions. It was amazing to see how well they were able to embody the champions when they performed."
In conclusion, I want to state again that I think K/DA concept was not based on a specific group. This was a project that a lot of people were involved and got their own inspirations from many groups in Kpop. One thing important that I also want to share from one of the link above is one of the product lead answers:
"Janelle: One of the biggest hurdles was that there are many different kinds of pop. Did we want something a little more cute and idol group based, such as Pop Star Ahri from before? Or did we want something edgier? After hearing the music, we settled on something modern and edgy. A bit of street style with a handcrafted feel. Picking the champions were also challenging too because you had to believe these women would actually be 'Pop Stars'. The artists also had to invent what an “edgy” sound and visual effects would look like in the game, which was hard to do as well."
From her answer, I think that they probably got inspirations from many edgy, girl crush kpop groups like 4Minute and G-Idle.
